


Forget-Me-Not

by meretricula



Series: Where Have All The Flowers Gone? [1]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: F/M, Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-04
Updated: 2010-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-05 18:18:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meretricula/pseuds/meretricula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Pevensie children return from the land of Narnia, Lucy is a little girl again, but she remembers being a woman. She remembers that in Narnia, it didn't matter that Edmund was her brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forget-Me-Not

When the Pevensie children return from the land of Narnia - they don't come home; Narnia is home; but it is the world where they were born and the world where they are stuck so it will have to do - Lucy is a little girl again, but she remembers being a woman. She remembers fighting a war against the White Witch; she remembers being crowned Queen Lucy the Valiant and holding court with her brothers and sister. She remembers growing up. She remembers the first time she bled like a woman, already knowing what it meant; she remembers the warm feeling in her stomach when she first looked into his eyes and _saw_ him (he didn't look different, but somehow, he didn't look the same); she remembers her first kiss, shy but unafraid.

She remembers that in Narnia, it didn't matter that Edmund was her brother.

*

They are all a little awkward around each other for a few days, adjusting to bodies that don't feel or move they way they are used to. Peter and Susan avoid each other's eyes and flinch away from touching. Edmund and Lucy watch each other intently, waiting to see who will break the silence first.

It is Lucy, in the end; it always is. She catches Edmund's hand in the hallway as they are going down to dinner (Susan is still getting ready in her room, brushing her hair and fussing with her clothes, because she was a queen four days ago and now her appearance is the only thing she can control; Peter has gone ahead, because leading the way is what Peter does) and he pulls her into a room off the corridor, letting the door swing shut behind them. "Do you remember - " she asks, and he stares.

"Do you think I could _forget_?"

"Oh, thank God," Lucy says, and kisses him. They are still children; it is nothing like their other first kiss, when she was sixteen and old enough to want what she only remembers wanting now. It is still Edmund, and it is still perfect.

*

It is months before Peter and Susan catch on, and Lucy doesn't know what tips them off. She kisses them all good-night - Peter, then Susan, then Edmund - and maybe she lingers too long on his cheek, maybe her hand clutches at his sleeve, maybe Peter and Susan are just now waking out of the blind fugue state losing Narnia and adulthood and each other has left them in. All Lucy knows is that when she draws back, Peter and Susan are staring at her and Edmund with the most terrible, blank expressions, and Susan grabs her and Peter grabs Edmund, and they are hustled off to their separate bedrooms.

"You can't - " Susan says. Her voice is awful; her eyes are worse. "You can't do that here, Lucy. It's not allowed."

"Not _allowed_?" Lucy demands. "Do you even remember anymore, Susan? Do you remember being a queen and a woman and beautiful - "

"Don't, Lu," Susan snaps, but Lucy will not be stopped.

"And every night we had dances after supper and all the lords and princes danced with you, and they hoped that they were special because you smiled at them, even though you smiled at them all - "

"_Lucy_," Susan says.

"But at the end of the night you danced with _him_," Lucy barrels on, "and you smiled at _him_ and they knew they never had a chance, because you loved him, everyone knew it, you loved Peter too much and they would never - "

"Lucy, _stop_!" Susan is crying. "Of course I remember! I wish to God I didn't!"

"Oh, Susan," Lucy says, touching her hand. She has already forgiven her sister. "But then you know - "

"It is _different_ here," Susan says, low and vicious. "We are not in Narnia anymore. We are not queens anymore. We are not _women_, we are little girls and it is not all right here to be in love with your brother!" She takes a deep breath, and continues, gently, "Lucy, we'll grow up, and we'll meet other people, other men, and we'll fall in love with them and get married and it will all be normal, and we'll forget - "

"No," Lucy interrupts, implacably. "It will never be normal, and we will never forget."

The worst part is that Susan doesn't know whether she hopes Lucy is right or wrong.

*

"It's wrong, here," Peter says. "There are - laws."

Edmund laughs, bitterly. For a moment he sounds as old as he remembers being. Older. "I'm not Edmund the Just anymore. In Narnia I would have cared that it was wrong. But in Narnia it wasn't."

Peter looks at him, and Edmund regrets his acrid tone. Peter is unhappy enough already. "Mother and Father can never know," he says at last. "It would kill them."

"That's it?" Edmund asks, after waiting in vain for anything more. "That's all you're going to tell me?"

"What do you want me to say?" Peter demands. "You'll have to spend your whole life hiding. Lucy will have to spend her whole life hiding. I can't tell you if it's worth that to you. But you can't ever let Mother and Father know. I wish I didn't," he adds, turning away.

"Susan will - " Edmund says, helplessly.

"We can't all be as brave as Lucy."

*

Sometime after midnight, Edmund creeps out of bed and into the hall. Lucy is waiting for him. "I wish we were in Narnia," he says, safely tucked away in the hall closet.

"Well, we aren't," Lucy says practically. She catches his hand in hers, and pulls him to her so they can kiss. It is mostly for comfort now, and familiarity, and a little for remembered warmth; but Lucy knows that in a few years they will kiss because it feels like breathing fire _not_ to. Lucy knows that she will grow up to be a woman who will love the man Edmund will become, and she can't regret that. She and Edmund belong together; they always have and always will. It took Narnia for them to learn that, but Lucy is not going to let losing Narnia take it away.


End file.
